End of the Rainbow Pudding – St. Patrick’s Day Dinner Party
Home » COOK » Recipes » Holiday Recipes » St. Patrick's Day Recipes »I often see rainbow-colored desserts on my journeys through the internet and thought I would turn my hand to making one for our St. Patrick’s Day Dinner Party.
I knew that I could jelly (jello) in most of the colours, and I thought I would top it off with Dream Topping (Cool Whip) and some gold sprinkles and call it ‘End of the Rainbow Pudding‘
This has got to be one of the most awesome desserts I’ve ever made! Everyone loved it!
It’s just jelly, but it looks so magnificent, and although it takes a good day and a half to prepare, it is straightforward to make!
The colours of the rainbow are…Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet.
I knew I wouldn’t have a problem buying jelly for most of the colours – strawberry, orange, lemon, lime, and blackcurrant would take care of the majority.
For my American Readers: What we call jelly in the UK is Jell-O in the US. I’m sure you probably have every color available to you!
I bought the pink raspberry jelly thinking perhaps I could colour it to make a lighter purple, and then I thought I would just leave out the blue…but as you can see in my photo, there is a blue layer…how did I do that?!
Read on!
As well as the jelly, I also needed Dream Topping (Cool Whip is the American substitute here!) and gold sprinkles for the top of the pudding.
I had some nicely shaped wine glasses that I used to make this dessert, so use whatever you have to hand – or you could do it in one big [glass] bowl – you may need to allow longer for setting time though.
Make up the jelly according to the instructions on the packet. Most ask you to break up the jelly pieces and place them into a bowl/jug and pour hot water over and stir until melted. Then adding cold water to make up to a pint of jelly.
I then poured the jelly equally between the 6 glasses – I tried to measure out by eye and in my head how much each layer would take up in the glass. The bottom layer in these glasses was about an inch deep maybe, the other layers about half an inch – but it was guesswork, and it will be different depending on what glass/container you use. Any leftover jelly mixture went into a separate bowl so that it didn’t go to waste!
Once the first layer was in, I popped them all into the fridge to set for about 2 hours. Obviously, check your jellies are set before pouring on the next layer – you don’t want them to mix together.
When one layer is set, make the next layer of jelly, pour it over carefully, and put it back in the fridge to set. I managed to get 5 of the layers done in one afternoon/evening.
It was really bothering me that I wasn’t going to have a blue layer of jelly as I couldn’t get blue jelly in UK supermarkets…then my son told me that they make a blue Powerade drink…*lightbulb moment* I could add gelatine to the Powerade and get my blue jelly after all!
So I followed the directions on the gelatine packet – you add it to hot water to melt it (not the other way around) and then make up to a pint with the liquid you want to set – in this case, the blue Powerade.
I had a bit of a wobble (no pun intended) that it wouldn’t set, but it set just fine. Woohoo!
I’m soooo pleased that my son suggested that blue drink.
The final layer went on – blackcurrant jelly – I just stayed with one layer of purple colour (not indigo and violet) because I ran out of room in the glass *blush* I also darkened the blackcurrant jelly with a tiny bit of purple food colouring as the jelly was more of a maroon colour than violet.
Once again, I left the jelly to set in the fridge, and when all was ready, I made the Dream Topping up according to the packet instructions. There was only room for a thin layer of topping which I gently placed on top and smoothed off. I then sprinkled over the gold ball sprinkles for the end of the rainbow gold treasure!
You could do the same layer with whipped cream, or even cream from an aerosol can that you squirt into a swirl on top and sprinkle with the gold balls.
I was so chuffed at how these came out – they looked so cool and really was the wow factor at this dinner party – we’re such a bunch of big kids!!
Mmmm….taste the rainbow!
Please try this – I know it takes a while, but the end result is so worth it! Have fun, and please share your pictures with me by commenting and leaving a link at the bottom of this post :)
May the luck o’ the Irish be with ye!